TODD SEAVEY
author of Libertarianism for Beginners and writer of/speaker about many other things

Monday, March 2, 2015

“Dear Reader” Author Michael Malice Inspires, Etc.

1. I only blogged
one day in February – and will stick to just doing weekly book reviews here for
the next four months – so to compensate and smooth the transition, let’s start
March with thirty-one brief thoughts
(read one per day if you like, to make it last longer!) – with half of the thoughts below inspired by
my friend Michael Malice, author of Dear Reader (those thoughts indicated
with a parenthetical “M!” because, well, it would just be weird to leave you
wondering which ones).

2. First, I declare March a “MONTH OF DECADENCE” on this blog, during which I’m blogging about
books on political excess in North Korea, in the Obama administration, and in Washington,
DC in general.

3. This should set the tone nicely for the four months of
book reviews, which, I’m warning you now, will all relate, directly or
indirectly, to libertarianism.

4. Indeed, those will be my only blog entries until
overhauling this site and my general online presence for grander purposes, in a few months.

5. If you happen to be a libertarian moneybags who thinks
the four months of book-blogging sounds like a cause worthy of subsidy, by all means contact me. I do not pretend to
have set up an “institute” for this or anything, but the rent must be paid
nonetheless, and the ghostwriting only goes so far.

6. This emphasis on books is partly meant as an antidote to
the last few years of social media seemingly leading to ever-shorter attention
spans and ever-shorter tempers. I will aim for more contemplation and less arguing.

7. Since tribalism leads to shorter fuses, the less-frequent
blogging will also continue my trend toward de-emphasizing the right/left divide.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not buying into the glib and
recurring claim that all such philosophical labels are meaningless – and the
distinction will inevitably still crop up for a long time to come – but if one
opposes, say, the welfare state, imperialism, taxation, rape, cop
militarization, violent street gangs, affirmative action, terrorists, anti-prostitution
laws, domestic spying, the drug war, bank and corporate bailouts, and
alternative energy subsidies, maybe sorting those items into two separate
columns before denouncing all of them
is an exercise that does more to prolong intra-statist conflict than to promote
anti-statism.

You can still sort them if you like. I don’t think it’s very
productive, and it took me years to realize how strongly people prefer the
sorting to the (more important) opposing.

8. Permit me, for old time’s sake, though, to take some
last-minute pleasure in seeing that at the most recent Intelligence Squared
U.S. debate here in NYC, about whether
liberalism stifles speech on campus, the conservative (so to speak) view
won one of the most decisive victories I’ve ever seen reported from one of
those debates, with the crowd swinging from only 1/3 before the debate believing liberalism stifles to 2/3 believing it after the debate.

Impressive – and as it happens, Jerry Mayer, who was a
Republican back when we were at Brown but is left-leaning now that he’s a
political science professor at George Mason, was on the losing side, while my
fellow libertarian Greg Lukianoff from the group FIRE was on the winning team.

9. The two preceding comments were an admission, always
dangerous in a political context, that my thinking has changed a bit over time
– which reminds me of a far more
trivial, practical complaint I have left over from the past few years
immersed in social media.

Almost as annoying as sites (often for restaurants or big
concerts) that don’t get you quickly and easily on the front page to the
very-basic “Where is it? When?” info (and in the case of NYC events, “What’s
the damn cross street?!”) are online articles with no dates on them – and group
blogs written in the first person that don’t indicate who the hell is writing
the entries. We want information, Internet.

10. The book I
mentioned at the outset, Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of
Kim Jong Il, is not only a masterful depiction of what the strange,
authoritarian North Korean regime probably looks like to its leaders, it is an impressively unsettling blend of funny and
dark. The basic formula behind the book’s creation, and something you won’t
quite get from any other book in existence, was a trip by author Malice to
North Korea and a trip back home to the U.S. with arms full of their propaganda.

What happens when
you use (often ludicrous and overblown) propaganda deadpan, as if it’s all
completely accurate, to build the first-person story of leader Kim’s life (the
one in between the founding grandfather and the current ruling grandson, for
those who can’t keep track)? Will the result make you more sympathetic to the
regime than ever? More horrified by it? A little of both?

You’ll have to read
it and see, then perhaps have students buy a hundred copies for the college class
on political rhetoric that you teach, if you do. I suspect Kim’s longing to see
a rainbow in one scene also owes a little something to that Mr. Burns biography
from an early episode of The Simpsons,
but that can be covered in a different class.

Malice says one
thing that made him keen to visit North Korea was his own birth in Soviet-era
Ukraine and his parents’ memories of living under Communist totalitarianism.
Such things are not mere history in North Korea, though it is a thing unto
itself. (M!)

11. One nice thing
about dealing with Eastern European immigrants in the U.S. is that they
haven’t forgotten socialism kills,
the way many in the West are rapidly forgetting whatever little they learned
back in 1989 on that topic.

Here in New York, the
state that’s ranked dead last for freedom due to taxes and regulations,
you’re surrounded by leftists all the time, so you almost start to believe you’re
the only person who remembers that communism killed 100 million people last
century. After all, here the Mayor’s a “social democrat” with old Sandinista
ties, and 70% of New York voters still voted for him.

Ah, but then you
talk to an Eastern European – especially one who notices the rhetoric coming
out of the mouths of socialist college professors (and socialistic U.S.
presidents) is very similar to what they heard back in the old country – and
you realize that not all has yet been
forgotten, and not all hope yet dimmed. Thank goodness for
immigrants. (M!)

12. Malice also
taught me that early language orientation overseas may mean you have one
more shade of “blue” in your bedsheets than native English speakers notice.
This neurolinguistic topic is hot lately, of course, and the most drastic
observation born of the recent talk is probably the revelation that the
ancients had no “blue” at all! (M!)

13. On the other
hand, I suspect there are limits to Ukrainian wisdom, not only because
of that whole civil war thing going on over there but because a Ukrainian did this on
a bridge. (M!)

14. As a former software
expert, Malice was admirably cautious while others were leaping to conclusions
last year about whether it was actually North Korea that was responsible for
that Sony hack purportedly inspired by the Rogen/Franco spy comedy The Interview. Stay skeptical. (M!)

15. If you’re really wary of governments manipulating the
Net, though, please stay skeptical about “Net
neutrality” while you’re at it. Once government starts setting prices, it’s
in charge. (M!)

16. Verizon’s parodic
Morse code reaction to the old-fashioned Net neutrality regs was a nice,
Uber-like example of companies’ willingness – which is by necessity growing in
some quarters – to admit they‘re at odds with government. This nation could use
a lot more open defiance.

19. That doesn’t mean our every intervention abroad in the
name of stopping such people will be beneficial, though, and it’s nice that Sen. Rand Paul got an enthusiastic
response at this year’s CPAC in part by reminding the crowd that a government
chronically inept in its domestic activities will likely be inept in its
foreign adventures as well.

20. There will be those
antiwar types who, by contrast, feel no sympathy for Netanyahu as he makes
his address to Congress Tuesday morning, but surely even the most ardent anti-interventionist
will at least agree (as I trust Rand Paul does) that intervening against Israel, as Obama reportedly
threatened to do (if there is any basis at all to that story), would be
even more insane than attacking Iran.

Libertarians can recognize Israel’s right to self-defense and, say, still defend Muslims from
harassment by Tea Party-ish anti-Muslims if need be, as
apparently libertarians did in Texas (h/t Meredith Kapushion and Gary
Chartier). There’s no contradiction there.

21. Speaking of war zones, to me the most amusing thing to
come out of David Corn and others picking apart Bill O’Reilly’s exaggerations about his travels (even if some of the criticisms might be hairsplitting)
were reports that witnesses placed O’Reilly in Dallas at a time when he claimed
to be across the country visiting a suicidal associate of Lee Harvey Oswald. That
phrasing almost makes it sound as if O’Reilly had something to do with the JFK
assassination besides writing a book about it! Trust no one.

22. Back in North
Korea, they would probably say it’s time for O’Reilly to engage in remorseful
self-criticism at a weekly mandatory struggle session – and we almost have
those here now anyway, except they usually consist of children apologizing to
classmates for being privileged, or to the Earth for letting their parents
drive cars. (M!)

23. The law doesn’t
quite mandate such behavior yet – but neither was (fascistic) former mayor
Giuliani wrong in saying (socialistic) Obama grew up influenced by communists,
and like (ex-Sandinista) Mayor de Blasio, Obama still got elected, so who knows
what the future will bring? (M!)

24. Oh, how far
we’ve come since the days of Hamilton, who is often lauded by Malice (to
the consternation of many libertarians who view Hamilton as the big-government
guy amidst America’s Founders). Hamilton is the subject of a fantastic rap
musical soon to move from Off-Broadway to Broadway. There really were laughs,
tears, catchy numbers, and real historical lessons learned. (M!)

25. Malice’s musical
tastes usually lean, like mine, more toward the New Wave and indie, though –
leading to things like his near-obsession years ago with the obscure “cowpunk”
band Rubber Rodeo.

But his is a
diverse mental world, and to find out what’s on his mind lately, seek him
out in venues like the Fox Business Network show Kennedy or on the site ThoughtCatalog, for which he wrote this
piece denouncing the social awkwardness of Lyft. Remember, just because
it’s created by the admirable free market doesn’t mean it’s not embarrassing.
This simple rule applies to most things in America, actually. (M!)

27. And if you’re a
conservative and conclude that what Malice needs is religion, note this article
he pointed out about a
prominent leftist coming out as Christian, namely Wonkette founder Ana
Marie Cox – an alarming reminder that religion is pretty useless as a predictor
of political ideology, and thus perhaps useless in general. (M!)

28. Despite North
Korea having its own brand of politicized quasi-religion, with all sorts of
supernatural powers ascribed to the ruling Kims, Malice often reminds people
that that country is no mere zany joke. The populace is routinely starved,
terrorized, and imprisoned, while we bicker over political trivialities in
other parts of the world or laugh at North Korean leaders’ haircuts. (M!)

30. In other
authoritarian news, from the land of Malice’s birth, Putin is oddly
loved by some – leading, I notice, to some of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’
fans being convinced it must have been the U.S. (and/or the Jews) who killed
opposition politician Nemtsov, leaving his Ukrainian girlfriend
behind.

As with the 9/11
“truthers,” I’m not sure how one combats the odd mental tick that leads people
to think that any time someone appears to be killed by his enemies, it must
instead have been his allies who did it. Stranger things happen,
certainly, but how does it become people’s circuitous, counter-intuitive
default assumption, even in the absence of any evidence?

What would the reasoning process look like if these people
wrote mystery novels? “Eliminate the thoroughly possible for no reason at all, my
good Watson, and the wildly unexpected is then your best bet.” I don’t think
that’s quite what Holmes said. (M!)

And I’m not just going back to Democrat-bashing when I say Obama
really can be bad in corporate and socialist, imperialist and Islamist-sympathizing ways all at the same time. Every
president, Republicans included, has to be a bit of a hodgepodge, after all,
with consistent principles mostly getting in their way (at least senators and
representatives have a smaller, more homogeneous district to please and thus
might almost attain consistency).

And speaking of Hodge and Obama, next time let’s take a look
at the former’s book about the latter, which indeed criticizes Obama’s
corporate tendencies from the left. (Things will be a bit more focused and
essay-like from here on out, I promise.)

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

So Nicaraguan Former Sandinista leader guerrilla Daniel Ortega has just secured another term as President (despite the constitution barring it). Ortega, of course, was one of the nine Sandinista comandantes during the 1979-90 revolutionary period.